Complete We (A Her Billionaires Novella #4) Page 4

  Ah, God, she was so ripe this morning. Dylan could taste her, thinking of her thighs pressing against his cheekbones…

  And his cock made his shorts rise like an eight-person dome tent.

  But he only needed one person right now…

  Mike smiled. “You do the same for me tomorrow?” he asked Dylan. “I gotta leave in fifteen minutes, though.”

  Laura laughed and pointedly looked at Dylan’s crotch, which only made him harder. “I think three minutes will do it,” she teased.

  “Three? Only three?” He gave a look of concession. “Okay, to come inside you.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the bedroom. “That gives us twelve minutes for everything else.”

  She followed him, jogging a little, which made her tits bounce and his body tense with growing arousal. Jesus. She was serious. He had been joking about sex and now—

  Man, he loved his life.

  Throwing her on the bed, he stripped her out of her pajamas in seconds, throwing his own shorts so far across the room he’d find them later in a spider plant that was perched on a shelf above the bathroom doorway. Their mouths pressed together, hot and wet, tongues dancing at the rush of decidedly illicit pleasure they were both stealing. Technically, nothing was stolen except for time.

  And time was a precious commodity these days.

  “Cyndi’s coming tomorrow,” she whispered as he took one nipple in her mouth.

  “And you’re coming right now,” he answered, fingers on her hot red nub already, the combination of sucking and touching normally enough to drive her to her first orgasm.

  “I meant,” she gasped, “we could go to the sex cabin when she watched Jillie.” She frowned, her body tensing. He stopped and pulled up, looking at her obviously in distress.

  “What?” he asked, desperate to make her happy again.

  “I just…maybe we shouldn’t. Not with Frank coming around suddenly.”

  Motherfucker. A flash of hot rage filled him, making him soften. “When you’re with me or Mike, you’re safe. Period.” His head buzzed like a hive full of disturbed yellow jackets, ready to plunge their stingers into the source of the problem. Laura most certainly was not the cause of any of his issues, but the urge to sink into something needed to be appeased. Preferably his cock sinking into her warm, loving core versus his fist into her uncle’s face.

  “But I—”

  “How about we focus on the present and worry about the rest later?” he said, nuzzling her neck. He was taming her and gentling her all at once, her body tense and eager, aroused and suspicious, centered on the edge of some kind of yawning chasm of anxiety and dread.

  She relaxed, but he could feel the difference.

  Frank needed to be dealt with. Now.

  “You’re right. I love you so much. And I love this so much,” she said with a gasp. Her touch on his shaft made him hard again. He was a simple man with simple pleasures, caught in a complicated web. Later, after he made her head and body explode, he’d simplify this Frank mess.

  Simplify the fuck out of it.

  “Ah,” he said, words already falling from his mind like dying leaves. Inarticulate half-thoughts fluttered through the cavernous space where linear thinking was supposed to take place inside him. Replacing it was a singular throbbing need to get inside her. Now.

  Now now now.

  Her eyes were unfocused, mind a million miles away, even his touch unable to ground her. A wellspring of aroused madness bubbled up inside him, making his blood rush to the surface of his body, turning him into a throbbing mass. Maybe he didn’t need to ground her.

  Pinning her in place with his cock would do.

  He prowled over her prone body, one hand doing the swift job of parting her legs, mouth on her before she could protest—but she didn’t even try. Her hips thrust up in grateful acceptance of what he gave, and it was his own gratitude and grinding need that met her in his mind.

  She pulled his head away, though, squirming under his tongue. “No. Not this. I want you to fuck me. Hard. Now.”

  That was an order he’d gladly obey.

  Pulling himself up in a swift, flowing movement, he belied the laws of physics, his shaft filling her, meeting wet, slippery silk as he groaned, neck muscles tightening with the surprising pleasure of how good this moment always felt. Always. His power over her was matched by Laura’s own intensity, eyes wide open and meeting his, the challenge met by paired flesh that sought one conclusion.

  Her hands were rough, hard fingers digging into the corded muscles of his shoulders, his back, and when her fingernails sank into his ass he pulled out, plunging deep, the change in pace calibrated to make her gasp.

  “Oh!” she moaned, the sound clipped by another thrust, then another, the lovemaking intense and hard, fevered and not gentle, as if he were driving out all her insecurity and fears by pushing her body to the limit. Maybe the mind would follow, vanquishing the confusion and overwhelm, but Dylan had no control over that. Her mind was hers. She had to find her own way.

  Her body was a completely different subject, and as he pressed his fists into the mattress, curved his hips up and in, he pierced her with a final push that made her gasp turn ragged, the sweet pink of her cheeks matching the soft walls below that he played so well to elicit her explosive climax.

  She shuddered and he followed, eyes now closed and body tightening, his worship of her soft, lush landscape the only thought he was capable of clinging to, sweat sprinkling his back, the hot push of abs against abs, her legs cordoned around his waist like he was rescuing her making him feel like a god.

  Laura did this to him. Made him feel omnipotent. Made him feel like he could do anything when he was inside her, as she wriggled and groaned, shimmered and panted—because he did that to her.

  He did.

  His muscles twitched, hot seed pouring out of him, draining him, his mouth sucking one pert nipple in as she convulsed in an aftershock of sensual glory. And then it all faded, the red lights of the clock’s numbers telescoping into focus, his mind back in the real world even as his flesh was encased by her.

  Slipping out, he separated himself from her, heartbeat normalizing, the transition from sex world to practical life always fragile. He grinned at the ceiling, willing his body to go back to baseline.

  “Thank you for that,” she said with a sultry voice, the sound of sex in the cadence of her words. It was a full-throated sound that hinted at a landscape of lust and more. He was hard again.

  She noticed.

  “Nice refractory period,” she said, nodding with approval. That made him laugh, and the two dissolved into giggles.

  “One minute!” Mike’s voice barreled down the hallway. “I really do have to go!”

  Dylan jumped up and searched for his shorts, finding them dangling over his head, making him laugh. Laura mimicked him, jabbing her legs into her pajama pants.

  “I got this,” she said, pulling him in for a kiss, the press of his naked body against her flannel-covered hips and legs making him inhale slowly. Sensation receded, replaced by thought as the day’s tasks spread out before him.

  Rather have her spread out before him, but hey—duty called.

  As she sashayed out of the bedroom and she heard Jillian shout, “Mama! Mama!” his eyes lit on his phone. Naked and distracted, he grabbed it, searching for Nicholas Murphy, private investigator. Mike walked in as he searched the Google listings.

  “Hey.” Mike opened the closet door and pulled out another white shirt, undoing his cuff links. “You mind covering your junk?”

  Dylan looked down and shrugged. “You’ve seen it before. Don’t look if you don’t like it.”

  Mike snorted, peeled out of his dirty shirt, grabbed the new one, and marched out down the hall, shouting, “Laura? Can you tie my tie for me? You do the knot just right.”

  Within three minutes he had the number. And just as he heard Mike’s Jeep roar out of the driveway, a voice rougher and more jaded than any he’d ever hear
d in his life answered the phone.

  That was a big fucking comfort, because rough and jaded got shit done.

  Chapter Three

  Mike

  Leaving Laura, Jillian, and Dylan wasn’t hard—Mike knew Dylan would keep them safe if something happened, and the chances that this Frank character would cause problems were remote. While Laura was clinging to Jillian like she was a life preserver, Mike looked at this from a different angle.

  Frank wanted money.

  What was his price?

  A five-figure check could make this all go away. Maybe. If Frank knew how deep their pockets were, he would want more. And if they gave him money, he might come back again. Knowing the tap was as big as it was—and the $2.2 billion trust fund was public knowledge—would Frank’s interference never stop?

  Then again, this was shadowboxing right now. The guy didn’t have the balls to approach Laura directly. Josie—in person. Laura—by email.

  He was cagey, all right.

  And Mike had no problem writing a check to make this all disappear.

  His call to his lawyer had been revealing, and when all was said and done they’d scheduled a meeting for later today to discuss the implications of possibly giving Frank money to go away. First, though, he had this real estate buyer’s meeting.

  While he wasn’t planning to sell the resort, he was prepared to sell off enormous tracts of land for a singular purpose:

  To preserve them.

  A real estate developer had recently made plans to put in more than one hundred new homes on land that had come available earlier in the year, along with strip malls that could drive small local businesses into the ground.

  He was too stretched to buy it then—even a $2.2 billion trust fund had its limits when you split it with another person and only could use the income each year. No complaints. That amount was a small fortune, but in terms of running a complex business like his ski resort, with more than a hundred employees, loads of heavy machinery, high liability costs in cases of injury, and myriad issues that plagued small ski resorts, it wasn’t as much money as he’d thought.

  But he was fine.

  A conservation group’s attorney had approached him last week to discuss buying ski resort land that abutted the proposed development for a simple purpose: protection. If the land were environmentally protected, the developer wouldn’t be able to put houses so close to the ski resort.

  Locals were excited by the idea, and it could help the community.

  A thought nagged at him, driven by comments from Laura:

  When was enough enough? He didn’t have to own the resort. He didn’t have to run it. While he’d handed much of the workload over to Shelly, his now-operations manager, he still worked too many hours. Work invaded his mind constantly, and he never, ever felt like he could turn it off. Never felt like he could relax.

  Never could let his guard down.

  And now Frank came along and made his guard go way, way up. Unlike Dylan, he wasn’t hyped up. Unlike Laura, he wasn’t scared.

  Mike’s view of this was more tactical. Figure out the guy’s weakness. Figure out what he wanted most. Manipulate those two pieces of information to strategic advantage. Develop a plan. Execute it.

  And then walk away from the entire mess.

  If it could be so easy, though, it would be. Nothing was ever that simple. As he picked up Route 2 to head into the city, his mind was everywhere but where it should have been.

  Home.

  With the people he loved most.

  * * *

  The meetings in Boston had gone well enough that he drove back to the ski resort’s corporate offices with a much lighter heart. The conservation group advocates were well informed and pleasant to work with, and his lawyer had given him the most basic of advice regarding Frank, which boiled down to one simple word:

  Delay.

  Whatever Frank hinted at wanting, assuming it was money, just buy time. The lawyer also recommended hiring a private investigator (off the record) to learn more about Frank’s past. Dylan was already on that one, and Mike felt like they had this. Frank could be managed out of being any sort of a threat. Or even a bother.

  Feeling like a nine-hundred-pound weight had been lifted from his shoulders, Mike found himself practically whistling as he walked into the resort’s offices, his pleasant mood cut short by the look on Shelly’s face when he walked in.

  She looked a bit sick.

  Her fingers dug into the wool of his suit jacket, slipping on the soft material, then tight again as she yanked hard to get him to walk into a small, unused office. Considering their size difference, her efforts were futile. It was like watching an ant try to move a brick.

  Nice of you to try, but good luck.

  “Sorry. Did that hurt?” she hissed as her fingers dug into his arm and she tried to make him move. He took pity on her and followed, giving her the impression her efforts had any effect.

  “No. Not a bit. What’s going on?”

  “You know some guy named Frank?”

  He went cold. His entire body went frozen and numb, from scalp to toes, and when you’re six and a half feet, that’s a lot of frozen tundra.

  “Is he here?” The look on Shelly’s face told him just how deadly his voice sounded.

  Which meant it reflected exactly how he felt.

  “Yes. Been waiting for an hour. Says it’s important and he’s your uncle.”

  “My what?”

  Shelly gave him a sour look. “I knew you’d never mentioned an uncle, so…I stalled.”

  “You’ve been wasting the past hour just hanging out here?”

  She looked nervously toward the reception area. “I don’t trust him.”

  “Hackles up that fast?”

  She nodded, auburn hair spilling over intelligent eyes that nothing got past. “Right away. He’s too smooth. Too oily. Someone like that will talk you out of your pants while draining your bank account, and expect you to make scrambled eggs and coffee in the morning for them.”

  Mike wanted to laugh. Really. It was funny, and he knew she made the joke to add some levity here, but it wasn’t funny.

  And Shelly knew it, too. Because she was serious.

  Dead serious.

  He pulled out his phone and tried to call Dylan. No answer. Laura. No answer. Machines both times, damn it.

  He sent a group text, cringing at the thought of Laura’s reaction:

  Frank’s here at my office.

  And with that he squared his shoulders, tucked his phone in his breast pocket, and quietly thanked whatever deity watched over him that of all the days, today he’d dressed in his best Christian Grey imitation.

  He would need all the power-tripping domination skills he possessed to get through this.

  Bzzzz.

  Before he could take ten steps, his phone jumped like a scared rabbit in his pocket. He took a long, deep breath and checked it.

  WHAT? Laura’s text only needed one word.

  Then his phone rang. The second he answered it, the panicked stream of words just didn’t stop.

  “What do you mean he’s there? At your office? At the ski resort? Why is he there and not here, visiting with me? What am I supposed to do now? I should answer his email, shouldn’t I? Stupid, stupid, stupid of me to ignore it! Maybe if I’d answered it he would have said whatever he needed to say and none of this would be happening. I don’t know why he’s doing this! Why is he at your office? Why did he visit Good Things Come in Threes and talk to Josie and not—”

  Dylan’s voice suddenly cut through her rapid speech. “Hey, Mike. She’s freaking out.”

  “You think?” Mike said with an arch in his voice.

  “You need me there?”

  “I think Laura needs you way more than I do. I don’t know the man. Have nothing against him except for the impact this is all having on Laura.”

  “Plus you have Shelly. I’d want her to have my back in a brawl.”

  Mike smiled an
d laughed, the sound loose and shaky. He’d summoned all his reserves to deal with Frank and hadn’t expected he’d need to talk with Laura and Dylan, too. Not like this. Laura’s panic was a wee bit contagious, and he drew on his inner self to set himself back to center. Whatever he was about to face in his office wasn’t going to control his entire family.

  No fucking way.

  Not normally the type to exert that alpha-male bullshit when confronting another man, Mike had to take a moment to collect himself. Channeling Dylan, he thought about which part of himself to tap into. Frank hadn’t done a single threatening thing yet. His mere reappearance and presence unsettled Laura, but one fact remained:

  Frank hadn’t done anything.

  Mike clued in on that for a moment. If this meeting was a blank slate, and technically there was no history between the two of them, then this was a pure and simple case of sniffing asses.

  He frowned. In man-to-man terms, they were establishing dominance and submission in this first meeting. His lawyer had advised him to keep control over all conversations and to delay. Don’t act. Just wait.

  That didn’t mean he had to roll over and beg to have his tummy scratched, either.

  One of the advantages of being the size of a redwood tree was that other men tended to defer to him, even if Mike didn’t know what to do with that power.

  Right now, though, he knew damn well what to do with it, and as he opened the door to find Frank sitting in the chair across from his massive desk, he braced himself.

  Alpha male engaged.

  As Mike grasped the doorknob and entered the room with a confidence he found surprisingly easy to fake, he saw the back of the head of a man whom he presumed to be Frank. The man paused, not standing at first, seconds ticking by.

  Half of Mike’s mouth lifted up in a sardonic smile.

  I was right, he thought. Already, the non-verbal power play began. Mike could play this game, too. After all, he had more than a decade of watching Dylan master it in a different setting, with jocks and firefighters and models. If anyone could provide him with lessons, it was Dylan. Funny how it hadn’t occurred to Mike to do just that.

  Get instruction from the master.